There are quite a few dojos in my country where the boast is their aikido is "combat effective." And then when you visit their dojos you find out that the sensei has no affiliation with an international aikido organization and no shihan to follow, the techniques are crude and very choreographed, and the odds are the entire school is just making do with techniques learned from books and videos. If it works for them, fine. But what this has to do with aikido is beyond me.